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Despite a unanimous (16-0) vote by league coaches to dump the double-bye format for the four top seeds, the Big East decided yesterday to not make the change to the Big East Tournament as league officials and ADs felt uncomfortable with the change for a number of reasons including financial and logistical considerations. Last year three of the four double-bye teams (Syracuse, Villanova and Pittsburgh) lost their initial tournament games, so coaches were pushing for a traditional sixteen-team bracket in part so that they can load up on some easy wins prior to playing the tougher teams in the later rounds, and in part so that everyone could plan on the same start date. Won’t happen, at least not this coming year.

Gary Parrish has a good read on former summer basketball camp organizer Sonny Vaccaro, the Godfather of AAU basketball, who has been out of the game the last three summers but apparently has the pieces in place to make another run at world domination of elite schoolboy prospects, just like the good old days.

We mentioned last week the possibility that class of 2011 top twenty prospect DeAndre Daniels may attempt to move up his entrance into college by a year, Scottie Wilbekin-style, but he has made the decision to attend prep school next year and will graduate with his class. He originally committed to Texas, but has re-opened his recruitment, with Kansas, Kentucky, Memphis, Tennessee and the Longhorns on his current list.

We found this interesting nugget in an article about something completely different (Jenn Brown’s possible beer ad career), but did you know that the average age of ESPN’s college basketball-watching audience is 48 (!!!) years old?!?!? For some reason, this is a lot higher than the NBA audience (39), and a year older than that of college football (47). For some reason, we’re stunned by this — maybe we’ve just been deluded by the much-younger internet audience, but wow.

We hope to have a post on this up later today, but both Scout and Rivals have updated their post-summer recruiting rankings. Their previous lists both had 6’6 wing Michael Gilchrist from Elizabeth, NJ, as the top player in the class of 2011, but both services have downgraded him coming out of the summer as a result of concerns over his shooting touch. The new #1s? Austin Rivers (Rivals) and Anthony Davis (Scout). Let the debates commence.

It appears as if Illinois’ Jamar Smith violated the terms of his probation by drinking alcohol; he’ll learn his fate at a Sept. 17 hearing. In other news, a 21-year old ball player recently had sex with a woman.

Memphis could be in some hot water over an improper phone call made by the FedEx CEO to one of his employees (who also happens to be the mother of the #2 rated PG in the class of 2009, Abdul Gaddy).

Gregg Doyel says he’ll bury the hatchet with Coach K if he brings home the gold medal next month. The most interesting part of this piece is the story about Coach K torpedoing Doyel’s book deal in 1999.

Andy Katz takes a look at the Wake Forest program one year after the untimely death of head coach Skip Prosser.

We thought this article by Dana O’Neil about coaches working themselves too hard in light of Prosser’s heart attack was going to suck, but we really enjoyed it. Coaches whine and complain about the summer circuit, but they really love it (poor headline, ESPN).

Jeff Goodman breaks down his top ten prospects from the summer camps in Vegas.

Gary Parrish gives an interesting insight into how programs game the summer recruiting circuit by not hiring assistant coaches until after they’ve developed good relationships with top prospects (sidenote: why did Arizona fire Miles Simon – that guy won them a championship!). He follow that up with another article on how coaches get creative but ethically suspect in getting recruits onto campus in a legal manner.